Quote from hidethereal: I have a question for TST/Patak as I'm interested in your program. What are some of the qualities and characteristics of the candidates that have succeeded and obtained funding and those who have failed? Also, I read something about an additional $5,000 fee or deposit of some sort. Can you elaborate on how that works? The TopstepTrader program looks to separate traders from gamblers. We look for traders who are disciplined, risk averse, patient, and have a proper understanding of how markets move. Specifically, most of our funded traders are proficient in trading one product only, make limited trades per day, and most of the funded traders set self-imposed daily loss limits which are less than what is required by Patak Trading Partners. Those who fail the Combine tend to show impatience, aggressiveness, lack of discipline, and often times do not have a trading plan or do not adhere to their trading plan, self-destructive tendencies, and greed. Specifically, recruits who fail often tend to trade their maximum position size, total contract trades per day are very high, and do not have a "shut off valve" when they are up money as well as continuing to trade with a negative p&l in an attempt to recoup losses. As for your question in regards to a $5K deposit, there is NO capital contribution required from funded traders. Patak Trading Partners funds the trading account AND absorbs ALL losses beyond the initial account balance. As a funded trader, before a withdraw can be taken, there must be an account cushion of $5K for $30K or $50K accounts or $10K for $100K or $150K accounts. The $5K or $10K cushion must remain in the account as long as the trader is trading the account. This is to protect the trader from taking the account into the negative, if the trader experiences a rough patch following an account withdraw. If for ANY reason a trader leaves the Patak Trading Partner's account, then the trader will receive their full share of the account cushion ($5K or $10K). When the trader requests a withdraw, Patak Trading Partners will take a withdraw at that time as well. Patak Trading Partners will NOT take a withdraw from the account unless the trader requests a withdraw. PS. There are a lot of question on this forum, to ensure your questions get answered, both myself (+1(312) 212 0481) and Brian Welsh (+1(312) 252 9858) as senior scouts are available to answer your questions. Please call our Trading Floor desk line during normal market hours. Thanks.
Quote from Maverick74: I'm surprised this question has not been asked. Michael, how many times will you actually let a guy come back and erase his previous debt? Say a guy goes goes live and loses 4k and goes back to the combine. Then he goes live again with a new account set at zero. Then he struggles again and loses another 4k. Back to the combine and live yet again. Account re-set to zero. I imagine there has to be a limit right? I know you will probably say it's a case by case issue but what do you think is fair? Are there any soft rules on this? Good question. The most we have done this is 4 times. So that is n the Combine, go live, struggle for whatever reason, go back to the Combine (if balance is well below initial starting balance of course). If they successfully meet Combine objective they come back live with a reset account balance and get another shot. If they struggle for whatever reason, they then go back to the Combine (if balance is well below initial starting balance of course).... Needless to say the most this has happened is 4 times. Each time we reset it and each time PTP absorbs the losses. I believe this trader took time off and is now readjusting his trading plan and methodology. mp
Additionally, Patak Trading Partners, LLC is a member firm of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Our registration information information can be found here: http://www.cmegroup.com/company/mem...day_mailing.pdf
Quote from hitnrun: Hello Michael For a trader with a live account . If there managing there risk according to your rules & are consistently profitable we realize that after the initial risk ptp takes with a trader , Once they start building equity in the account your risk is very limited it seems like the rules are very strict for everyone within your structure , possibly even for those that prove themselves most traders that are making money & managing risk would prefer to be treated as individuals based on there own performance with ptp & hopefully be afforded some flexibility to grow together as in a two way street for a trader that is profitable & doing what is expected do you work with your traders to ease the restrictions on them trading is challenging enough without all the added stress , it's all about making money & controlling risk . right Is your firm ptp flexible with traders that have proven themselves with you ? Is the 1 year contract with ptp that is required negotiable? hitnrun- very good question. We treat our traders like discovered talent that we want to keep and will do anything to make the partnership as mutually beneficial as possible. IF a trader is producing we lay way off the guy/girl. We let him be the trader he is. When you first start you play by our rules as it is our equity partners (PTP) capital. Once you have established yourself as a proven trader which is somewhere around $5k-$10K in profits that you have built, doors begin to open. You no longer have to follow the initial "rookie" trader rules. You are a proven trader and as your account grows opportunity will as well. Things like lower exchange fees we can get as we would purchase trading rights for the product you trade (if we currently don't already have those rights). We would open you up to coaching a group of up and coming recruits (you would be compensated from TST for this). This all happens if you are a PROVEN trader with PTP and come to us with requests on how we can better put in a more profitable situation. Our proven traders are treated like franchise athletes and that is how we look at you. mp ps. we use sports analogies with trading quite a bit.
Quote from SteveNYC: The interview with M. Patak was très bien. I listened to the entire interview and got good vibes. He sounds like a Major League baseball player and not too shady. He states that his TopstepTrader program uses a performance based business model unlike the usual prop lite business model which uses the "deposit $5k, churn and burn, out the door in 3 months" business model. This is a key difference. So, if you are good, you continue to trade and progress. If you suck, you are out of luck. It's a profit based trading model similar to legit prop trading where you get paid so you could eat, have a roof, and clothes, and get a monster bonus if you are good. This beats the crappy transaction based prop trading where you are whipped daily to make a ton of trades and generate a monster commission. I call this "transaction based" business model a "pimp n hooker" business model. You even have to pay $5k just so you could become a hooker. Dang. At TopstepTrader, you don't have to pay the annoying $5k. Just a measely combine fee which might be refundable. That said, it doesn't mention if you need to get the Series 7, 56, etc. licenses. Thanks for the analogy and for the reference of sounding like a major league ballplayer. That is what we feel like we are doing when we work with talent in our program and those trading live (funded traders) We do look at TosptepTrader as the minor leagues and Patak Trading Partners as the major leagues. Just like the professional sports model we are geared toward a performance base model unlike much of the trading industry with its transactional based business model. Nothing wrong with how others do, just not how we want to discover talent. So to answer your question you do NOT need to be licensed when trading for any firm that is strictly proprietary capital. Our majors or Patak Trading Partners is strictly proprietary capital. mp
Quote from volente_00: How much did the top producer earn in 2010 and 2011 ? We did not really start getting talent that produced well until we changed our program to evaluating on performance not just profits. We made this change at the beginning of February 2012. When we make a change it takes months for it to show up in the talent that we have coming through the Combine as they then start changing their habits to meet the criteria. So to answer the question. 2010 was a building year and most if not all of 2011 was an evolving year, so nothing substantial there with traders. We are NOW finding better talent and are starting to generate producers so check back with me at the end of this year and I will get you an update when 1099's are printed. I do want to say that this is a new concept that has taken over 2 years to put together. After 2 years we now have enormous confidence in our program and are excited about what will materialize from future prospects that take the opportunity we provide which allows them to develop and get a risk free shot at the markets. mp
Quote from traderCND: Are you serious?? You ask potential traders to send you money but you won't even say who owns the firm we would be sending it to? There is an element of trust involved in that if we pass the combine we will be given a backed account...but you refuse to say who we should trust. I think knowing the backgrounds of the players goes a long way. For example, have they ran successful trading firms or is Oliver Valez involved? It would be nice to know. We do NOT ask traders to send us money for Patak Trading Partners. We never have and never will. We are not like other prop firms out there that ask for $5k risk deposit and make you a member of their company or however it works with them. The funds that traders trade at PTP is strictly proprietary capital. Meaning not customers, traders or a pool of investors. TopstepTrader which is a trader education group. Holds a small deposit (avg $200) that gets returned to you when you get brought up to Patak Trading Partners (or what I have been calling the major leagues, TopstepTrader being the minor leagues). Therefore we do not release the owners of the companies as NO trader has a stake in either company. Traders are given an opportunity not asked to give funds to continuing showing they can traded with PTP's proprietary capital. I hope that clears it up a bit. mp
Quote from volente_00: Why is it relevant what others can do ? The only thing that matters at the end of the day is what you can do I will venture to say 95-97% fail at the combine Of those that go live I will estimate 88-90% get sent back down eventually. My question for Mike is Why do you have such high profit targets with small risk ? I think there is a big pool of traders that could make you a lot of money if you backed every profitable trader that shows $1500+ in the smallest combine who over multiple combines show consistent lower profit targets with the same risk parameters. Volente- you are about correct with the above.. SO for simplicity purpose I am quoting you and sorta answering gmst prior. Though those that you mention FAIL do not necessarily fail many receive rollovers (deposit refund or you can roll it over to a new Combine which 90% or so I believe do). Also you are correct that trading is a PERSONAL journey... meaning what other around you do is irrelevant. It is what YOU do with the opportunity that defines who you are as a trader. Now to your question. Why do you have such high profit targets with small risk ? First the reason would be PTP which is the equity backer want to see those that can produce. We also know that when someone goes from Combine to LIVE there is a drop off in performance.. So if you were to be taken live (aka financially backed) on a 30k account giving you 3 lot max buying power and a $500 daily loss limit.. You would have shown that you can produce a $250 trading average.. This drops a bit when you go live so we do have higher exceptions when you are not on real money accounts. We do NOT expect you to meet ANY profit target live. This is only during evaluation (aka the COMBINE). As for the risk.. we think that $500 a day loss limit for the account mentioned above up to $3,000 a day loss limit for the biggest accounts we evaluate on are extremely reasonable assuming that we are asking you to have a trading average (you daily p&L average out over the number of days traded) just greater than $250 for the smaller account or $1,200 for the largest account that give you $3,000 a day loss limit. Lastly a recruit can propose different evaluation criteria with different profit targets or objectives and send in their proposal for approval. The scout team meets and reviews these every other day and when approved we ask you to trade as advertised going forward.. So you can put together how you would like to be evaluated. If you put the profit target low we may counter with ok that is fine but we want to see this or that. So we do work with a trader if he or she feels our standard evaluation criteria does not fit with their trading methodology/plan/style etc. You can find the customized objective details here: http://www.topsteptrader.com/customevaluation Let me know if I answered that correctly. Sometime it is hard to know what one is asking over a post. mp
Quote from traderCND: Also, here is a link to the application to become a CME Rule 106.H. Trading Member Firm: http://www.cmegroup.com/company/mem...mbershipApp.pdf Basically you write your name down and agree to certain criteria about how you treat your traders. One of the stipulations is: "The firm may not allocate expenses to trades or traders in excess of actual direct and indirect expenses of the individual member firm trades or traders. Only actual expenses incurred may be allocated â a mark up on expenses is not permitted. Further, opportunity costs may not be allocated. CME Rule 106.H. must maintain and provide adequate supporting calculations and documentation of such allocated expenses and their reasonableness." This clearly says that Patak cannot mark up trades and as a trader you have the right to demand to see what the costs are. traderCND: This is the commission charged by our clearing firm. I have already stated this in a prior post. Thanks mp